Novak Djokovic grew up in war-torn Belgrade, discovered tennis by chance, and was inspired by watching Pete Sampras win Wimbledon. Carmichael pulls three lessons from his story: turn hardship into strength, explore until you find your passion, and model people who've already succeeded.
Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is Dream Big. Over to you, Novak Djokovic.
Belgrade, as many cities around Serbia, has suffered a lot because of war. Many people have had the doubts of what tomorrow brings. They were not certain They are able to support their children, and in this particular situation were my parents too. Knowing what we have been through actually strengthened my, my character. I used to run around outside of our restaurant, and very nearby something was going on, some kind of construction. I asked the workers and then they told me that they're building tennis courts. I never heard the word tennis. I knew football and some other sports, but tennis was absolutely new to me and to my family. Fell in love instantly with the sport. I used to play for hours against the wall. On the television, I watched Pete Sampras play for his first Wimbledon title. That's when I decided to dream big and dream about being one day on the center court of Wimbledon and holding that trophy.
So I really love this short clip for 3 main reasons. The first is, here's this guy coming from this country that he's had a lot of things against him, right? He had a lot of bad luck. He had a lot of, you know, just from his circumstances. A lot of people there would give up. A lot of people say, well, you know, I can't do anything. Look at where I'm coming from. I don't live in America. I don't have these huge opportunities. And he saw that, he saw the struggle that he went through as making him stronger. He saw it as a positive to help make him stronger to go out and accomplish something more. Where a lot of people see it as a weakness, he saw it as a benefit and something that made him stronger, and I love it. The second thing that I love was that he explored until he found something that he loved. Now he did this at a really young age, but where other kids were playing soccer and playing other sports that he heard of, they built these random tennis courts in his hometown And he picked it up and he went and tried something new and he fell in love with it, right? If you don't know what you want to do or if you don't love the work that you're doing, you need to explore things until you find the thing that you love. He picked up the tennis racket and he just couldn't put it down. He was playing for hours and hours and hours, just hitting the ball against the wall because he loved it. He fell in love with it. He didn't have to convince himself that he loved it. He actually loved it. And so you need to do the same thing. Where other people might be playing soccer, whatever the equivalent is, right? The, the easy, safe things where other people are doing this, this, and that. And then this weird thing comes up that nobody knows about. Give it a shot. See what happens. The worst thing is you try it once and you hate it, but you might try it once and love it. And you could be Novak Djokovic level at that, where if you didn't try it, you wouldn't know. So explore things until you find a thing that makes you come alive. And then the third thing is model success. Like he sees Pete Sampras on TV and that allows him to have a bigger dream for himself. Where his environment might be smaller, you know, nobody that he knows have had that kind of success, maybe people he knows hasn't broken free of the country or have gone on to do big things, model success. He turns on the TV, he sees Pete Sampras killing it, and he's like, I want to go do that. So having people that you can model, look up to, like, you know, I have people here behind me on the wall, they're there for a reason. I model their success. They help me be the best version of me. And so those 3 things is what I took from the super short video. I'm really excited about making his top 10 rules. So I think we have to make sure that comes up pretty quickly. So the question of the day today is, are you dreaming big enough for your business, for your life? Leave it in the comments below and I will join in discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Eric Sanchez. Eric, thank you so much for buying my book. It means a lot to me. For those of you watching, if you want your chance at a shout out in a future video, make sure to pick up a copy of the book and email us your receipts. and we'll enter you into the draw. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
